This invention relates to plasma-addressed liquid crystal display panels commonly referred to as "PALC" display devices. These devices comprise, typically, a sandwich of: a first substrate having deposited on it parallel transparent column electrodes, commonly referred to as "ITO" columns or electrodes since indium-tin oxides are typically used, on which is deposited a colour filter layer; a second substrate comprising parallel sealed plasma channels corresponding to rows of the display crossing all of the ITO columns each of which is filled with a low pressure ionizable gas, such as helium, and containing spaced cathode and anode electrodes along the channel for ionizing the gas to create a plasma, which channels are closed off by a thin transparent dielectric sheet; and a liquid crystal (LC) material located between the substrates. The structure behaves like an active matrix liquid crystal display in which the thin film transistor switches at each pixel are replaced by a plasma channel acting as a row switch and capable of selectively addressing a row of LC pixel elements. In operation, successive lines of data signals representing an image to be displayed are sampled at column positions and the sampled data voltages are respectively applied to the ITO columns. All but one of the row plasma channels are in the de-ionized or non-conducting state. The plasma of the one ionized selected channel is conducting and, in effect, establishes a reference potential on the adjacent side of a row of pixels of the LC layer, causing each LC pixel to charge up to the applied column potential of the data signal. The ionized channel is turned off, isolating the LC pixel charge and storing the data voltage for a frame period. When the next row of data appears on the ITO columns, only the succeeding plasma channel row is ionized to store the data voltages in the succeeding row of LC pixels, and so on. As is well known, the attenuation of each LC pixel to backlight or incident light is a function of the stored voltage across the pixel. A more detailed description is given in Buzak et al., "A 16-Inch Full Colour Plasma Addressed Liquid Crystal Display", Digest of Tech. Papers, 1993 SID Int. Symp., Soc. for Info. Displ. pp. 883-886.
A problem in the known construction is that too large a column voltage is required for full activation of a LC pixel. Typical driving voltages required with the known construction such as described in the SID Digest 93 publication are in the range of 80-100V.